By Susana Lima

According to bankers, the decline in credit card portfolio is due to various circumstances like choosing more carefully the type of customer who is granted access to this type of credit.

From 2008 to 2011, plastic money crashed in Nicaragua's banking system was 42.2%, according to the Banks Superintendence and Other Financial Institutions (Siboif) meant a reduction of U.S. $ 344,320.

The president of the Association of Private Banks of Nicaragua (Asobanp), Juan Carlos Argüello, predicts that the downward trend will continue.

Grow a credit portfolio is not easy. Probably every year you will be seeing rather more significant separation between the growth in commercial loans, agricultural industry and the wrath of cards being proportionally smaller, he said.

The Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), noted that until 2008 the plastic money in the banking system increased, reaching more than 300,000 customers.

The financial crisis between 2009 and 2010 produced the credit crunch as a result of low economic growth in the country, and the trend worsened by the tightening of regulations through the Standard for Credit Cards Operations active since 2010.

This is good because it also became operational credit bureaus that will enable banks to better understand the history of the customer’s indebtedness in order to be more efficient, he says.

The representative of the Consumer Protection Network, Jorge Rooseess, explains that the rules stop the irresponsibility of banks to issue credit cards which caused debt to thousands of customers.

The National Financial System (SFN) default rate for credit card loans is only 1.7% of the total credit portfolio.